The use of electronic storage of information has long had the problem that once information becomes “historical” and is no longer required to be changed, it is inefficient and expensive to store such information on “primary storage”—that storage which the system, usually a computer system, uses for creation, correction and/or manipulation of the information to be stored ultimately as a permanent record. Accordingly, electronically stored information is often “archived”, requiring migration of the data to “secondary storage”. Additionally, even information which is relatively newly created, but which is infrequently accessed, may be relegated to secondary storage. Typically, secondary storage has slower access and longer retrieval times than primary storage, but since the demand for the information stored thereon is relatively low, such lower performance specifications do not normally impact upon accessibility of the information.
However, present systems involving the migration of data from primary to secondary storage employ some form of “stateful middleware”, be it in the form of servers, databases, indexes or such like. Stateful middleware thus introduces an additional layer, thereby creating another point of potential failure and has a significant impact on scalability and/or ease of scalability. The mode of potential failure is not necessarily a failure to store information on secondary storage, but a failure in the stateful middleware application software preventing data retrieval.
With hierarchical storage management (HSM), present systems involve migration of data using stateful middleware. In practice, HSM is typically performed by dedicated software, such as that known by the trade marks “CommVault”, “DataMigrator” or “VERITAS Enterprise Vault”. Such “stateful middleware” creates an additional layer having the shortcomings previously described. HSM systems known in the art may sometimes be described as utilizing centralized management. However, such systems do not provide for delegation of tasks to agents from a single machine, but employ a login model whereby the user manages any number of management servers individually from a single login point, an expensive administration and configuration overhead.
In this specification, unless the context requires otherwise, the term “data” may be taken to encompass information stored in electronic or electronically readable form. The term also may be taken to encompass data stored in all data object types and/or file types, including, but not limited to, binary large objects (blobs), files and any data representation type unless the context requires otherwise. In this specification, unless the context requires otherwise, the singular shall incorporate the plural and the plural shall incorporate the singular.
The present invention aims to provide a data management system which alleviates at least one of the problems of the prior art, or at least provide a cost effective alternative to existing systems. Other aims and advantages of the invention may become apparent from the following description.